Anonymous Monk has asked for the
wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Hey i'm at the very beginning of perl and making a simple im bot. i downloaded the beginner bot from www.wiredbots.com, and its cool. my main purpose thus far is to make text responses to input from people im, so say my friend im's the bot, and then input would be what they say [or part of it, wired bots had a simple code
-----------------------------
Screenname: SCREENNAME;
Password: PASSWORD;
Message;
Hello|Hi|Hey=exact>Hi! How are you?|Hello!;
Are you=>Yep.|Probably.|I dunno.|Nah.;
/Message;
Connect;
-----------------------------
my problem was the 'are you=>yep.|probably.|i dunno.|nah.;' section doesnt work. when i tested and said "how are you", the response i get is "huh?" how would i include these inputs and responses into my bot?

input------------------response
hey,-------------------hey, hello, or hi.
whats up, sup, etc,----not much, but this is andys im bot
please respond soon, it would be much appreciated, and if i begin to grasp this stuff i may enter the business one day. also please email the response to aimbot1@hotmail.com

Instead of just downloading software that's intended to teach *cough*scriptkiddie*cough*, you should learn Perl to make your bot far more functional than the template will allow.

Learning Perl will allow you to create innovative features, and your knowledge of the language will help you in other ways.

Try learning Perl. I (and many other perl monks) would be more than willing to help you if you had a problem with code you had written. But Perl Monks isn't tech support for cut-and-paste outside code.

Learn Perl. It's good for you.

from the wiredbots.com tutorial: I would recommend learning Perl if you want to make a good bot. There are some great sources to help you learn Perl, such as perl.com and perlmonks.com.

now the main perl one that i would want to enter the responses into is called on_im.pl, and it shows and area to enter the responses (if not a command), but i dont know what to put in or how. heres that code

-----------------------------------------------------------
################################
# WIRED BOTS
#
# on_im();
#
# desc: This sub is called when the bot recieves an IM.
# It first grabs AIM default vars.
# Then filters those vars
# Then checks to see if $victim is an idiot
# Then Checks to see if $msg is a command
# If not a command && not an idiot:
# It replies via the custom code (or command sub)
# Then logs the IM
# Then sleeps and sends
#
# recv: AIM's vars w/ $victim, $friend, and $msg as args.
# sends: either a warning, or a message.
################################

#if not a command..
if ($isacommand != 1) {
#custom code
#put what you want your bot to do here.
#its better to put it in a sub, so you can edit it later easily.
#right now its set up to grab a thought from my database
$reply = thought();